Delivery Matters

While reading the Wonder Woman comics I couldn’t help but compare them to the comics I am reading today and I realized that the discussions on serious topics were handled much better. Wonder Woman was designed by Marston to be able to take topics that were common and bring them to the public in a way that actually educated people like mental illness in issue 6. He did not do this to make sales or make himself look better but because he honestly believed in that the issues in the comics were important. In this manner the comics and issues were treated with a seriousness that is not often seen in the modern comic where even if something is given attention it is also joked about to the point where the important issue fades to the background. An example of this can be found in a recent X-Men comic where one of the main team members, Bobby Drake, comes out as gay. That in and of itself is great but the way it was done was highly problematic because it had another character invade the privacy of his mind a tell him he was gay instead of allowing him to claim his own identity. This could have been handled so much better and I can’t help but compare the way that the issue was addressed to the way it would have been addressed in early Wonder Woman comics had such a thing been acceptable. In this way it is clear to see that being educated and knowledgeable about a topic while also being sensitive to those who experienced such a thing can improve the way an issue is taken by the audience. Writers have so much power to change things and they need to be aware, like Marston was, that they can change things for the better.